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Upanishads : " The Cream of Vedas"
Vedanta ( Veda +anta i.e; the end of Vedas ) as the literal meaning connotes comprises the philosophical portion of Vedas, called the Upanishads.
Of about 280 Upanishads unearthed so far, 108 have been accepted as authorised texts , and out of them have been commented upon by great Acharyas lika Sri Sankaracharya , Sri Ramanjacharya, Sri Madhavacharya and thus are classified as major.

Just for the purpose of elucidation and re-emphasise the most important point here, we must, through a repetition, again draw the reader's attention to a subtle truth underlying the very arrangement of thoughts here.

First, the meditator cries out : "I am seeing His auspicious nature,"
and thus he hushes himself into the silence of joy thundering : "He am I."

In the earlier exclamation, the ego lingers and, therefore, it sees the experience "Divine".

But when the ego has ended, the roar is not "I am He" ---
for, there must be then the lingering "I" ----
but it is "He am I.&quot…

The very epithets of glory used here by the Rishi-s in addressing the Lord SUN, are significant in as much is the 'dying ego' addressing.

The philosophic import of the prayer is brought into greater relief by the unsaid suggestiveness that is implied in the various qualifications which are added to the Lord SUN.

They apply equally to the 'Atma,' Nourisher, Sole Seer, ( Omniscient ) the "Controller of All," etc., are all amply self-evident in that equally apply to the prayerful ego -- the completely integrated 'inner' personality of the individual at meditation, when the mind and intellect are transcended --- meets Truth in silence to become itself the Truth in its subjective experience.

But what right has the seeker to demand from the Supreme such an unveiling, is explained when the devotee declares that the Truth should reveal Itself unto him, for "he is himself a practitioner of Truth".

This is very significant in as-much-as the seeker's goal is Truth, his path is Truth and this very path of Truth is laid over with Truth at every step.

In religion, means are as sacred as the goal.

Through deceit and aniamalism there is no path at all laid for b evolution, progress, peace, or perfection.

Continued love and dedicated loyalty gives to the lover a certain secret authority over this beloved.

When a devotee has lived sufficiently long a full life of Divine pursuits, his expanding heart of purity and faith gurgles up a flood of confid…

Thus, as Swami Sri Adi Sankaracharya says, "It is certainly the last prayer of theb dying individual but the individual meant here is the ego-centre."

We are not to understand that it is literally prayer of the dying old man on his death-bed.

It is the last prayer of the active seeker in his meditation-seat when he, in his divine effort, is shaking off his last venture of ego which is lingering to veil the Self in him.

The mind-and-intellect-conditioned Awareness ( ego), when it tries to understand and grapple with the Pure Awareness behind it, gets itself blinded by the glory and brilliance, and so it declares to the Pure intelligence to unveil itself for its cognition.

Prayer in Vedantham is only an attempt of the ego-centre to attune itself to the "Supreme Consciousness" in the individual.

Addressing the "Supreme Consciousness, the ego-centre in the individual is chanting this Mantram.

The epithets, by which "Lord Sun" is indicated, are chosen with a special dexterity.

"PUSAN" is one of the innumerable names of Lord SUN.

"IT MEANS THE "NOURISHER - - - - THE SUSTAINER.

The Sun is the centre of the entire Universe, itself motionless and inactive, and yet by its very presence, it balances the entire movements of the Universe around it and, being the nourisher and the source of all energy in the Cosmos, it represents the seeker's …

In the 'Vedic period,' there were none of those 'Puranic gods' to be worshipped, since they were of a later addition to the wealth of the 'Bharatheeya ( Hindu ) spiritual literature.

Therefore, we find that, in this Upanishad, the prayer is to the 'Lord Sun' who was to the shrewd intellect of the Bharatheeya people, the clearest symbol of the mighty Creator, Sustainer, and Destroyer of the Universe.

In the modern times, with all our scientific knowledge, it must be certainly easy to appreciate this great belief of the 'Vedic Period.'

The Universe minus Sun-God would be a chaos and not a cosmos; life in the planets would have been impossible but for the blessings of this mighty Lord of Energy and Power -- the 'S…

Discussion-5. " This is again an instance where philosophers enter into unproductive arguments" ......

One very satisfying explanation was from Sri Swami Tapovanj Maharaj. :

It beautifully reconciles this confusing contradiction.

Swamiji suggested to his students .to recognize 'Sambhuti' and 'Sambhava' as meaning the "birth of a new spiritual life," and 'Asambhuti and 'Vinasam' as referring to the "the cessation and destruction" ----- cessation of the creation of new 'Vasanas' and the total destruction of the entire existing 'Vasanas'.

In this sense 'Asambhuti', 'Asambhava', and 'Vinasam' are all pointing to the same spiritual
condition.

They mean the annihilation of all material wants and the consequent absence of rebirt…

A mere Vedantic perfection does not make a man fit to live in the community of men and women and work in the field of Avidya to redeem his generation from the mental and intellectual dustbin into which it has fallen.

In the contention of a cultural renaissance, the great Master will have to face different types of challenges in which he can easily find equilibrium and poise only when he is efficiently guided and continuously rejuvenated by his limitless devotion to the Lord of his heart.

"Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa's" : might and glory was his experience of the Self, but his life's poise and equanimity were the special blessings of his beloved Mother "Kali" of
"…

The controversy between bhakti and jnanam is perfectly proved to be empty and hollow by suggestions contained in this mantram.

It is suggested here that these two are not contradictory, but they are complementary and are to be practised in a serial.

Devotion to a 'Personal God' ( Sri Rama, Sri Krishna, and many, Sri Bhuddha, Mahavir, Jesus, Allah and so on, as a person wish ) with a "form and name" ( images, statues, and so on ),
is as much important for the greater and higher meditation, as continuous and intense meditation upon the formless and nameless Reality is necessary for the greater realisation
of the Self ( Atma / Jivatma/ Paramatma ).

In this intelligent synthesis of bhakti and jnanam together, the result would be, in the R…

( 14) . "He who worships the Impersonal Godhead and the Personal God together, overcomes death through the worship of the Personal and obtains immortality through the worship of the Impersonal."

Here Swami Sri Adi Sankaracharya, takes 'Sambhuti' to mean the "primordial matter"
( Mahat tattvam ) which we may call as "Prakrti or Nature," which is not in its expression as an effect but as the very cau…

(13) " One thing they say, is verily obtained from the worship of the Manifest. Another thing, they say, from the worship of the Unmanifest; thus have we heard from the wise who have explained that to us."

Discussion : - Just as in the second mantram of the earlier triplet ( Mantra-s 9, 10, 11.), here also the Rishi is trying to explain to us that what we generally understand by the terms 'Manifest' and 'Unman…

In the earlier mantra-s it has already been said that 'Vidya and Avidya' are not mutually contradictory or conflicting ideas, each a sure death-knell to the other, and they are not to be mixed indiscriminately into a rough synthesis.

It has been said that they are complementary to each other, and that they are to be undertaken in an intelligent sequence.

First, action ( Avidya ) as dictated by our desires, in order to bring us out of inertia
( tamas ) into an active mentality of sprightly enthusiasm ( rajas ), and, thereafter, through a pursuit of desireless activity, one can gain purification of one's mind and intellect which is a preparation for meditation.

Later on, through steady and diligent meditation, the seeker gains the fulfilm…

"And obtains immortality by Vidya" : Mortality is, we have already seen, the fate of 'matter' and not the destiny of the 'Spirit'.

The pot may break and destroy the pot-space; but the 'space' in the pot is neither broken nor ever made; it is the all-pervading space, ever-the-same.

Similarly, birth and death, decay and disease, bondage and liberation, sorrow and joy, success and failure, etc. , are all experiences available only to the ego -- centre, and by themselves are but delusion-created appearances.

This is realised when the Pure Awareness comes to flash out, as it were, through the 'matter'- envelopment.